I just got back from Czopek funeral home in Wyandotte to see my friend Chris. He was killed in a car wreck on 75 at Sibley on Thursday night. Don’t really know any details about what happened; not even his mother and father knew yet. It was surreal. It looked like him, yet it didn’t. I hadn’t talked to him in quite awhile, but Jim had just seen him before Christmas where he was working at Suncoast Video in Fairlane mall. It was a total shock when Jay called me to tell me on Friday. There was no way Jay could make it to the viewing today, and the funeral tomorrow is family only, but he wanted very badly to be there. No one has been able to reach Tom Kennedy in Arizona either, to tell him the news.

There were a lot of souvenirs in and around the coffin, which was even more upsetting than the body because each one was really symbolic of him and I instantly recognized the connection. Someone had stuck a two-liter of Pepsi and a bag of Doritos next to him, which he was never without. He, Tom, and Jim would come over to me and Jay’s place in Dearborn to play D&D; five of us crammed around the table in our tiny kitchen, which was usually scorching in the summer, windows wide open and two fans blowing. Chris always had the Pepsi and Doritos. His floppy hat was there too, which he always had on outside of work. He had a high-pitched giggle, and got his inside and outside voice mixed up a lot, and when he listened to music he usually directed it like an epileptic orchestra conductor. He was in love with Sarah Michelle Gellar, and swore he was going to marry her one day, Freddy Prinze Jr. be damned. He’d give his friends the shirt off his back without even having to be asked, and I wish we hadn’t drifted apart. Kim and Tara from Warner Bros. store were at the funeral home, and Tara gave me a picture cropped from the group shot taken when the bunch of us went to Cedar Point after the WB store closed. We had a lot of fun that day, and I hadn’t thought about it in a long time.